


and they never want it again

by remindmeofthe



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Fanfic of Fanfic, Gen, Mildly Dubious Consent, Positive ending, Subdrop, as far as post-mountain fics go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:15:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28766934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remindmeofthe/pseuds/remindmeofthe
Summary: Many people believe, through myth and rumor and ill-informed gossip, that switches can’t experience subdrop.  Jaskier could tell them all better a thousand times over, if he thought for a moment any of them would listen.BDSM AU: coda for 1x06.
Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 2
Kudos: 47





	and they never want it again

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [My Sweetest Friend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24334303) by [WithThisShield](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WithThisShield/pseuds/WithThisShield). 



> Briefly: BDSM AU is similar to A/B/O in that Dom/sub/switch/etc are biological roles.
> 
> This fic was inspired by [My Sweetest Friend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24334303/chapters/58673371). It can be read on its own, but if you like it, I encourage you to check out MSF. It's so good!
> 
> The dubious consent tagged, which is non-sexual, is minor within the AU trope. However, for anyone who needs more detail, it can be found in the end notes.
> 
> Title is courtesy of "Violet," by Hole.

Many people believe, through myth and rumor and ill-informed gossip, that switches can’t experience subdrop. Jaskier could tell them all better a thousand times over, if he thought for a moment any of them would listen.

But he himself has believed, because he’s never experienced otherwise, that, for switches, the effect of subdrop is like that of a Dom voice: it exists, but it doesn’t cut as deep.

One day on a mountain, though -

one day on a mountain, he finds out he’s wrong. After twenty-two years of fighting to suppress his full nature as a switch, of trying to be a good submissive companion for Geralt, of _doing his best_ -

“If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands.”

\- he was never good enough, never good at all, never -

The subdrop hits hard, smothering his mind and his senses.

He can’t stay here.

He did everything wrong, he failed. He can’t stay here. With Geralt. He can’t stay here.

He was wrong to think he could be a good enough sub for Geralt, he deserves nothing, he can’t stay here. He deserves nothing. He failed.

He says words, walks away, knows nothing outside himself for a long while. Knows nothing until Yennefer wraps her hand around his wrist.

*

Under any other circumstance, Yennefer would have portalled immediately off the mountain. She’s a believer in cutting her losses, after all, in brushing herself off to look for the next opportunity.

But no one will ever catch her running away. Not ever, especially not -

Never.

So she walks down the path, focusing on the journey ahead and nothing else until someone steps too close beside her.

Jaskier. Who else.

She turns with harsh words on her lips, but they die when she sees him.

She’s always assumed that he was a neutral pining after Geralt, mimicking the behavior of a submissive in a tragically pathetic bid for his attention, but now - his eyes are clouded, his face is slack, his posture is closed and crumbling.

Yennefer is not the traditional kind of Dominant. She doesn’t have the patience or draw or desire to care for or claim a submissive, and they’re too much work just for a fuck as well, before, during, and after. It’s why she likes to bed other Doms; they can both take their pleasure and walk away.

But right now she’s hurt and beginning to grieve the loss of a love she’d thought she could keep; right now it’s harder to ignore the way her Dominant instincts are responding to the presence of a submissive in such obvious and dangerous distress, and right now it’s easier to take Jaskier’s wrist in one hand and open a portal with the other.

The portal takes them to her home in Toussaint; more specifically, to her sleeping chambers. Once secure inside, she turns to look at Jaskier, beginning to realize what she’s taken on.

However. She may not be the traditional kind of Dominant, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to dismiss the needs of a sub she’s just taken under her care. She’s simply going to have to do the best she can.

“You need someone coddling and kind,” she says. “You’ll take what I can give you instead.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, eyes still too far away, and she winces inwardly. He won’t forgive her easily when he remembers calling her that. But then she doesn’t need him to think well of her. She never has; he never will. It’s unlikely they’ll see each other again after this, anyway.

Yennefer takes a pillow from an armchair she doesn’t use much - it’s more pretty than practical - and sits, placing the pillow on the floor at her right side.

“ **Come here** ,” she says. It feels odd to use her Dom voice; as a sorceress, she so rarely needs it. “ **Kneel**.”

Jaskier obeys without hesitation, dropping to his knees on the pillow. He looks up at her, waiting for his next instruction.

It’s been a long time since Yennefer has put herself in a place to give orders to a sub; she has to pause and think of the right words.

“Yes, good boy. Listen to me.” She slides her hand into his hair and guides his head to her knee. “Just relax. All you have to do for me is be good and relax. You don’t have to do or think about anything else.”

As she talks, she runs her fingers through his hair. For a minute or two after she thinks she’s going to regret not grabbing a book to offset the inevitable boredom, but she doesn’t get bored. She watches Jaskier, entranced by the way he relaxes by degrees, feeling his relaxation deepen into her too. His eyes fall closed as he sags against her, settling bit by bit back into his skin; her shoulders lose tension as she draws strands of his hair between her fingers.

Eventually, she slows her hand, slides it down to his shoulder to give him a shake. “Come back. Time for a nap. Good boy.”

He stirs slowly, lifting his head to blink up at her. He’s still down deep, but it’s subspace now; his eyes, though not fully focused, are clear, and he looks peaceful. Content. Yennefer stands, guides him to his feet. “Nap time,” she tells him. He nods a little, follows her to the bed.

This time, she does take a book from the nightstand before she settles, propped up against several pillows, murmuring, “Come on,” as she gestures Jaskier down.

She left plenty of room next to her, so she’s surprised when Jaskier curls lower, head on her hip, somehow making his tall body into a small comma beside her. He’s not her sub and she wouldn’t take him if he offered, but something in her purrs nonetheless at knowing that she did this for him, that she’s the one who took him from a place of pain to feeling comforted and safe.

She slides her hand back into his hair, listening to his breathing slow as he falls asleep.

*

Jaskier doesn’t want to wake up - he feels warm and comfortable and safe and he wants to stay wrapped up in that - but a distant sense that he has to, that he was only supposed to sleep for a little while, plucks at him until he reluctantly opens his eyes.

A familiar voice says, “I was starting to think you were going to sleep through the night,” and the memory of the past day comes crashing back.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he says, with feeling.

“All the way back now, are you?” Yennefer asks. He feels her hand come out of his hair. “Shame, I quite preferred you too far gone to put two words together.”

She had him kneel for her, he remembers, and petted his hair. Told him to take a nap. He should be embarrassed - _humiliated_ \- that he submitted so easily to his least favorite person on the Continent, but that sense of warmth and safety still lingers, and he finds he can’t muster anything else up.

He rolls slowly onto his back and looks up at her. The look on her face is - well, on anyone other than Yennefer of Vengerberg, he’d have called it uncertainty.

“Thank you,” he says quietly, and that look fades from her face. “You didn’t have to do that for me.”

“Well. Someone had to do something,” she says, brisk. “You’d have wandered right off the mountain in the condition you were in. He should have known better.”

He wonders for half a second how she knows, but of course she knows. There’s only one person who could have done that to him. He swallows and stares up at the ceiling. “I don’t think he noticed.”

It’s better than thinking that he just didn’t care. Even if that is probably closer to the truth.

He yelps, startled, when Yennefer gives his hair a sharp tug. “Hey! You’re not actually my Dom, you know!”

“Look at me.” Her tone is forceful, but she stops short of using her Dom voice, so he skips making a show of resistance before he obeys. “Never mind him. He doesn’t deserve either of us. Don’t give him enough space in your head to let him make you drag yourself back down again.”

He blinks up at her, a bit stunned. She puts aside her book and slips elegantly off the other side of the bed.

“I have no interest in being your Dom, but I’m not going to let you waste all my hard work either.”

He watches her cross the room to the door. “You were wrong before,” he says suddenly. She doesn’t answer or look back at him, but she does pause in the doorway. Waiting. “What you were able to give me was exactly what I needed.”

She hesitates, and he thinks for a second that she’s going to answer, but she leaves the room instead.

She’s gone only for a few minutes, enough time for Jaskier to stretch languidly as he gets to his feet, to try to smooth the wrinkles from his clothes and quickly give up, to not even make an attempt at fixing his hair once he finds how thoroughly rumpled she’s left it. That’s going to require a mirror and a brush at _minimum_ to sort out.

He feels - okay. Not great, but better than he knows he’s going to feel once the lingering effects of subspace are gone and the reality of the day’s events has settled in. The nap helped too, like a good nap always does; he feels more rested than he did when he woke up this morning.

He’s just spotted her vanity and is making his way toward it, hoping for answers to questions he’s always had about her cosmetics - he refuses to believe that the answer is “magic” across the board, he has seen her tucking actual products into her bag - when he hears her return and decides against it.

“Good choice,” she says dryly as he turns to face her. She’s setting a tray, of all things, on a table in the corner, a tray bearing a pitcher and two goblets and two full plates of food. Cheese and smoked meats and bread, grapes and sliced apples. Nourishing, easy to eat with one’s hands or to feed to someone - exactly the kinds of foods Jaskier would and has brought a submissive after a good session.

She raises an eyebrow at his expression. “You are a guest in my home,” she informs him, “and I am in fact acquainted with the basic tenets of hospitality.”

Jaskier considers kneeling next to her chair as though he expects to be hand-fed, just to see what she does, but discards the idea as soon as he has it. She’s been startlingly kind. He won’t repay her with rudeness.

No matter how great the look on her face would be.

“I thank you for your generosity,” he says instead, taking the chair opposite hers.

“It needs to be eaten. The preservation spell won’t hold indefinitely.”

They eat in silence for a while; Jaskier discovers with his first bite how hungry he actually is, and he suspects Yennefer has had a similar revelation. Once his plate is half-empty, and he’s enjoyed some of the superb wine in that pitcher, a rather important question finally occurs to him.

“Where are we, anyway?”

“Toussaint. Twenty leagues out from Beauclair.”

“Toussaint? Is it safe to be this far south?” Was it really only just last night they were discussing Nilfgaard’s encroachment?

“For now.” Yennefer sips her wine. “I don’t intend to linger. I’ll reunite you with your horse tomorrow, then I have my own business.”

As recently as yesterday, or even a few hours ago, had Jaskier found himself in Toussaint by Yennefer’s doing, he would have assumed he was expected to make his own way back, would even have been suspicious of her offer. Now, though, he believes she’ll do precisely as she says. She’s still actively taking care of him, after all, no matter the motive she claims for feeding him. It would be very difficult, right now, to persuade his contented submissive side not to trust her, and he doesn’t care to try.

“I appreciate that,” he says.

“No need to let a poor dumb beast suffer,” she says, and he mouths the inevitable punchline along with her, “nor your horse - oh, am I predictable now?”

“I would venture to say that I have heard jibes worthier of you.” The words are diplomatic; his smirk is not. She scoffs.

“I thought you were a neutral lacking a grasp on the finer points of performing submission, but no, you’re just a brat.”

“True,” he agrees easily, “but I’m a switch, not a sub.” Then he pauses. “A neutral, really? Can’t say I’ve been accused of that before.”

“I wasn’t paying you that much attention. Though I suppose a switch annoyed at not being able to challenge a Dominant for the prize does make more sense.”

Even now, when they’re trading barbs not meant to cut, Yennefer wins; he falters, can’t find a reply fast enough, then can’t find one at all. 

Unlike before, unlike countless other times, his unwitting concession doesn’t feed her, it throws her off. She pauses - no, hesitates - and reaches for her wine.

“But,” she says, “I’d say neither of us won,” and it’s another first. Jaskier has never heard her sound _unsteady_ before. He takes a breath and picks up his own goblet, raising it to her.

“To being out of that fucking game,” he says. She blinks, then taps her goblet to his, agreeing,

“To being out of that fucking game.”

They both drink, and Jaskier knows he’s not the only one pretending, for a moment, that they both won after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Mildly dubious consent: Yennefer induces Jaskier to submit non-sexually to her while he is in an altered state of mind and cannot give consent. Once recovered, Jaskier feels slightly bemused but ultimately comfortable with the situation.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Come shout about witchers and sorceresses and bards oh my at tumblr.


End file.
